This proposal to study the effects of hospital and home support programs upon maternal attachment and maternal care is motivated by research that indicates that amount of contact between mothers and infants at the time of delivery may influence maternal attachment, that home visits by paraprofessionals can increase the effectiveness of parental education, that stable patterns of maternal behavior may be established during infancy and that those stable patterns of maternal behavior have early, continuing and cumulative influence upon child mental health and child development. This intervention research project will test hypotheses that a hospital program of increased contact between mother and infant after delivery and a program of home visits that provide support and counseling for the mother during the first three months of life can significantly influence maternal attachment and maternal care. Increased contact between mother and infant will be supported by hospital personnel and by changed hospital routines; increased counseling and support for mothers will be provided by paraprofessionals who are trained and supervised by behavioral science and public health personnel. The predictive value of pregnancy adjustment and of postnatal adjustment for later maternal behavior will be studied from data collected during pregnancy, at six weeks, and at one year. If positive effects of the hospital and home support programs upon maternal attachment are found, the project will seek funding to evaluate the effects of the programs upon the child's social, emotional and intelletual development through three years of age. Subjects of the study will be mothers and infants without serious medical complications who are eligible to receive health services from a county health department. Random allocation of subjects to hospital and to home experimental and control groups will control bias in the evaluation of the intervention program.